Part 1 – What does your DATA bring to the party?

There’s no keeping score in data, and not all types are created equal – it’s either hot (valuable) or not (useless). And with so many data segments out there promising to deliver the audience insights you need, it’s hard to tell data X apart from data Y; not to mention which will prove fruitful and scalable. Luckily, this quick three-part blog series will help you decipher and decide what’s best for you and your ongoing marketing and advertising efforts by asking “what does your data bring to the party?” by focusing on the big 3: first-party, second-party, and third-party data.

What’s difference? Where do you get what? Why do you care?

Let’s ease into first-party data first…

Simply put, first-party data is YOUR own data, or data that is collected by your company based on someone’s interactions with your company website. This essentially free data set includes anything from the data your CRM captures such as an email address to other on-site audience behaviors such as purchasing history. For example, Amazon supports its marketing efforts with first-party data by showing users products of likely interest on its homepage according to previous on-site behavior.

Similarly, for advertising purposes, Amazon retargets display ads of previously revealed onsite consumer browsing (e.g. you see an ad for the shoe brand you checked out earlier on a separate Amazon page). First-party data uncovers real interest in your offerings and is therefore both incredibly powerful and informative; revealing only current, relevant and unique audiences and actions. The best part? It’s 100% transparent, allowing you to choose what data to capture, how to capture it and determine when it was captured.

Unfortunately, you can only have so much of your own data. And while it’s critical to incorporate first-party data into your advertising and marketing strategies, its scarcity and inability to scale are issues that lead marketers to look elsewhere for more data, more insight. This opens the door to a new data segment…

Stay tuned for part-two of the series, where we introduce you to the data new segment in town – 2nd party data.

• First-party, second-party, and third-party data
• The key differences between the three data sets
• Where each type of data comes from and how you can access the data you need
• The Pros and Cons of each type of data
• And most importantly – getting started with the data that’s right for YOU